The position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow is a fixed term position for a period of thirty months. The primary objective of the appointment is for the research fellow to qualify for work in senior academic positions.

The position is attached to the Arctic Green Computing (AGC) research group at the Department of Computer Science.

Further information about the position is available by contacting associate professor Phuong H. Ha, phone +47 77 64 40 32, email: phuong@cs.uit.no

UiT The Arctic University of Norway is the largest research and educational institution in northern Norway with about 12,000 students and 2,900 employees. UiT is a founding member of the University of the Arctic, an international network of study and research institutions of the circumpolar region. Two hundred international agreements secure an active academic exchange of students and staff with partner institutions worldwide.

The Department of Computer Science provides a strong international research environment with 12 tenured faculty members, 6 adjunct professors, 3 post-doctors and researchers, 6 technical/administrative staff members and about 20 PhD students from different countries. The goal of the Department is to advance the research and teaching of Computer Science as a discipline, to demonstrate leadership within our areas of interest, and to contribute to society through our education, research and dissemination.

The Arctic Green Computing (AGC) research group aims at addressing energy efficiency, system complexity and dependability across mobile, embedded and data-center systems. The group current research interests include novel execution models forming foundations for a paradigm shift from energy “blind” to energy “aware” software development and, at the same time, facilitating programming productivity on energy-efficient computing systems. The group research has been funded by European Commission (FP7), Norwegian Research Council (FRIPRO) and UiT. The group is a work-package leader in EU FP7 ICT project EXCESS on energy-efficient high-performance computing systems (2013 – 2016) and the project leader of Norwegian FRIPRO project PREAPP on programming productivity and energy efficiency (2014 – 2019). The group is the Norwegian representative in the management committee of the EU COST Action Euro-TM on concurrent programming abstractions (2011 – 2015) and a member of EU network of excellence HiPEAC on high performance and embedded architecture and compilation.

The position’s field of research/field of work

In today’s exponential world of digital data, computing technology plays an essential role in addressing our major social challenges including climate change, health, energy and education. However, worldwide computing systems currently consume 30 billion watts, equivalent to the output of 30 large nuclear power plants. The environmental impact of computing systems is of the same order as that of the Czech Republic, the 35th country in the top carbon-emitting countries in the world. Energy efficiency is therefore considered a major criterion for “sustainable” computing systems and services over the data deluge. However, energy-efficient computing systems make parallel programming even more complex and thereby less robust due to requirements of massive parallelism, heterogeneity and data locality.

The research project aims at devising novel programming models that will form foundations for a paradigm shift from energy “blind” to energy “aware” software development. The new models will enable significant improvement in energy efficiency in comparison with today’s multicore computing, thereby greatly advancing green computing and sustainable services. The new models will facilitate unprecedented productivity for implementing scientific big data applications that run effectively on large-scale high-performance computing (HPC) platforms, which are based on cutting-edge manycore architectures. The threshold of adopting large-scale parallel computing will thus be considerably lowered for a large number of computational scientists in several disciplines.

Qualification requirements

The successful candidate will have a publication record that documents solid knowledge in computer science, and strong research skills on technical aspects of experimental computer science. We are looking for candidates who have demonstrated increased scientific maturity in their selection of issues, application of methods, and documentation of results. Research results should be backed by thorough experiments and analysis.

For appointment as Postdoctoral Fellow, the applicant requires:

Norwegian doctoral degree in the subject area concerned or a corresponding foreign doctoral degree recognized as equivalent to a Norwegian doctoral degree.

When applying for a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, the applicant shall submit a project proposal for the qualifying work. This proposal shall include a progress plan. It is required that the applicant will be able to complete the project during the period of appointment.

The successful candidate should have a strong interest in at least one of the following topics: energy-efficient computing, concurrent data structures and algorithms, programming systems, run-time systems and big data processing. Experience of partitioned global address space (PGAS) programming and convolutional neural network (CNN) is a plus.

Emphasis shall be attached to personal suitability.

Working conditions

The working hours shall primarily be utilized for research, research-related activities and research administration. The position will not include regular teaching assignments.

The successful applicant must be willing to engage himself/herself in the ongoing development of computer science as a discipline, the department, and of the university as a whole.

The remuneration for this position is in accordance with the State salary scale code 1352, grade range 57 – 77. At present, the gross salary starts from NOK 483,400 per year, depending on qualifications. A compulsory contribution of 2 % to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund will be deducted. We offer good welfare benefits.

Enquiries

Applicants are welcome to send an email to preapp.recruitment@cs.uit.no. The e-mail ought to include the following email subject and PDF files:

Email subject containing the applicant’s full name

Letter of application

CV (containing a complete overview of education, supervised professional training and professional work)

Research proposal

List of publications

Relevant publications: the applicant should submit up to ten publications that are central to his/her production. The applicant’s doctoral thesis is regarded in this context as one publication.

Description of his/her production stating which publications he/she considers the most important. A brief description of the other listed publications should also be included to demonstrate depth of production.

Diplomas and transcripts from PhD degree or equivalent

Names and email addresses of three references

All documentation should be translated into English or a Scandinavian language.

Well-qualified applicants will be called for an interview. Such an interview shall among other things aim to clarify the applicant’s personal suitability for the position. A trial lecture may also be held.

Questions concerning the organization of the working environment, such as the physical state of the place of employment, health service, possibility for flexible working hours, part time, etc. may be directed to the telephone reference in this announcement.

UiT has HR policy objectives that emphasize diversity, and therefore encourages qualified applicants to apply regardless of their age, gender, functional ability and national or ethnic background.

UiT is an IW (Inclusive Workplace) enterprise, and therefore emphasizes making the necessary adaptations to the working conditions for employees with reduced functional ability.